It has become fashionable to hate EA. I think it’s because EA doesn’t bother hiding the fact that it wants as much of your money as possible. Every year there’s another Madden , another FIFA , another Need for Speed … we’ve made the name EA synonymous with the casual, reskinned money sinks that I call “perennials.” The thing that really makes EA seem like the bad guy, though, is its stubborn reliance on and widespread use of DLC and microtransactions.
As much as it pains me to report it, I have to say that EA is doing something very, very right when it comes to making money. In its latest earnings report the numbers indicate that in the second quarter of the 2016 fiscal year EA earned more than double from “extra content” than what it earned on actual game downloads. Extra content includes all of those microtransactions, DLC, Madden cards, Dead Space upgrade materials, etc. Season passes end up in the “subscriptions / ads / other” category, but if they were included as extra content the numbers would be even more astronomical. As it is, it looks like in Q2 EA raked in over a billion dollars in extra content, while full game downloads only earned about $427 million. Take notice, video game enthusiasts, because I guarantee you these numbers caught the attention of every developer and publisher out there.
Source: TechnoBuffalo